Despite fears about the many negatives from a Donald Trump presidency, one positive could be his shattering of the monopoly that neocons and liberal hawks now hold over U.S. foreign policy.

Americans and the world have valid reasons to worry about Donald Trump's presidency, given his lack of experience and his refusal to recognize that his loss of the popular vote should moderate his emerging domestic policies. But Trump also could do some good things.

Particularly, Trump could break the death grip that neoconservatives and their "liberal interventionist" tag-team partners now have locked around the throat of U.S. foreign policy. Trump owes little to these "regime change" advocates since nearly all of them supported either other Republicans or his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton. And the few who backed Trump, such as John Bolton and James Woolsey, have been largely passed over as Trump assembles his foreign policy and national security teams by relying mostly on a combination of outsiders and outcasts.

The latest example of "fake news" is the wild misrepresentation of a message from the Republican National Committee that caused a Christmas day frenzy as the establishment media and bitter online leftists pushed the theory that a reference to a "new King" in a paragraph talking about Jesus was an allusion to Donald Trump.

The RNC Message Celebrating Christmas began:WASHINGTON - Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Reince Priebus and Co-Chair Sharon Day released the following statement celebrating Christmas:

"Merry Christmas to all! Over two millennia ago, a new hope was born into the world, a Savior who would offer the promise of salvation to all mankind. Just as the three wise men did on that night, this Christmas heralds a time to celebrate the good news of a new King. We hope Americans celebrating Christmas today will enjoy a day of festivities and a renewed closeness with family and friends.

RNC Communications Director Sean Spicer called out both CNN and BuzzFeed on Twitter for hyping the bizarre interpretations of the Christmas message. CNN posted a story titled "RNC: The 'new King' is not Trump," while BuzzFeed's article "People Are Arguing About Whether Republicans Just Compared Trump To Jesus" stated:

The combination of the words "this Christmas" and "new King" had people wondering whether the GOP was comparing Donald Trump to, well, Jesus.

Spicer, who is slated to be the Press Secretary for the Trump administration, wasted no time in not only stating the obvious fact that "the King" is a reference to Jesus Christ but to call on both CNN and BuzzFeed to apologize.

After any great victory, such as the one achieved by Donald Trump in November, it is natural and important to celebrate it. However, it is equally important to ensure that the euphoria of victory does not inhibit one's critical facilities. After all, viewing the world as one would like it to be, as opposed to how it actually is, is an ancient folly, a folly to which we will find ourselves all too susceptible to if we do not vigilantly guard against it.

It appears however that it is just this folly, the folly of wishful thinking, which Professor Alexander Dugin (among others) has fallen into in his recent post-election piece on Donald Trump's victory that:

Trump's victory shows that there are two Americas today, or rather, two versions of the United States: Clinton's America and Trump's America. Trump's America is traditional and conservative, healthy, and worthy of respect. This America said a resounding "no" to globalism and the expansion of liberal ideology. This is the real America, the America of realism which has chosen its president and not succumbed to the false propaganda of the globalist liberal media.

Of course, in a sense, Dugin is right here, that, there are in fact "two versions of the United States" the U.S. of Clinton and the U.S. of Trump. Undoubtedly, these two versions are incompatible with one another, either one or the other must win the contest for power, and only one can claim to be the "real" America. Dugin asserts that it is Trump's America that is the "real" America and it is here the that the problem with his analysis lies.

Shocking images have emerged online purportedly showing an elderly man being publicly beheaded by Islamic State-affiliated militants in Syria for practicing 'sorcery'.

According to the independent Kurdish press agency ARA News, the execution was carried out in Syria's Daraa governorate by the Khalid Bin Al-Walid Army, a jihadist group operating in Syria under the banner of Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL).

The images, which were released on Tuesday, show the man being 'tried' by a militant-led court in a village. There another man, presumably a member of Islamic State's (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) religious police, reads out charges of 'sorcery' before a crowd, which includes several children.

Photos then show the prisoner blindfolded, bent over and about to be beheaded by a masked executioner.

The most gruesome of the photos shows the man with his severed head lying on his body.

From the way Israel is reacting you would think that someone had dropped a nuke on Tel Aviv.

Prime Minister Netanyahu summoned the US ambassador to deliver an official diplomatic protest.

He went public with his condemnation, too, calling the recent actions against Israel "reckless and destructive" and excoriating John Kerry and President Obama for their own part in this fiendish skullduggery.

He has ordered the Israeli diplomatic machinery to start curtailing their working ties with UN Security Council members, including minimizing diplomatic visits and denying foreign ambassadors access to the Israeli Foreign Ministry.

Not to be outdone, Rabbi Levi Shemtov, executive vice president of American Friends of Lubavitch, turned the National Hanukkah Menorah lighting ceremony in Washington on Sunday into a weapon of diplomacy when he squeezed in a not-so-subtle dig about the "darkness" of the UN Security Council's recent actions.

Even Newt Gingrich got in on the act, finding an excuse to blame the whole fiasco on (who else?) those dastardly Russkies.

So what unthinkable, egregious violation did the Security Council commit? Why, they dared to condemn ethnic cleansing, of course.

Once President-elect Donald Trump is in the White House, there will be a different game between the US and Israel. Nobody knows what kind of a game it will be, but it will be a different game, says Gideon Levy, a columnist for the Haaretz newspaper.

Tel Aviv's rage over a UN Security Council resolution calling for an end to Israeli settlements in occupied territories has been reiterated by the country's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who says that Israel cannot and will not accept it.

Netanyahu also commented on the resolution: "I ask those same countries that today wished us happy Hanukkah, how did they vote on the decision at the UN which says that this place, where we are celebrating Hanukkah, is occupied territory?"

The resolution was able to pass after the US, Israel's close ally, abstained from the vote with 14 countries voting in favor.

Israel is now taking various steps to demonstrate its discontent summoning the envoys of countries that supported the resolution and threatening to freeze aid for UN bodies.

It may even be waiting for Donald Trump to enter the White House, where the bilateral situation may change.

Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman has lambasted the upcoming Middle East peace conference in Paris, labeling it a "scheme" designed to hurt Israel's reputation and likening it to the infamous trial of French Jewish officer Alfred Dreyfus.

Speaking in the Knesset, Israel's parliament, on Monday, Lieberman denounced the plans unveiled by the French foreign minister on Thursday to convene some 70 countries in Paris on January 15 for a peace conference devoted to the settlement of the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Lieberman, who has repeatedly made headlines with his controversial statements, compared the conference to the historic trial of Alfred Dreyfus, a French artillery officer of Jewish heritage.

"There is only one difference between what they are planning in Paris [and the Dreyfus affair], last time there was only one Jew on the stand and now all of the people of Israel and the entire state of Israel," Lieberman said, Haaretz reported.

Let us take a few moments to meditate on the last eight years.

• The U.S. is still bogged down in Iraq.
• The U.S. military is still protecting poppy fields in Afghanistan. It's been America's longest poppy field protection operation. And its longest war.
• The first black president expanded AFRICOM and the shadow wars and classified drone operations in Africa.
• He also destroyed Libya, the most prosperous, developed nation in North Africa. As expected, his justification for doing so was later revealed to be massive baloney bullshit
• He "created a secret drones program to kill terrorist suspects worldwide without public acknowledgement or due process. Under his watch, the US has expanded the field of battle in the "war on terrorism" to a dozen countries and constructed institutions and routines of surveillance and assassination - such as the so-called 'disposition matrix' and 'Terror Tuesdays' that will have serious consequences beyond his presidency."
• Then there's Ukraine. Don't even get us started.
• The "Asia pivot" is also working out great. So glad that we're now provoking the Chinese in an ocean called the South China Sea.
• And of course, there's Syria. The Obama administration's greatest, most moderate success.
• In general, everything is terrible.

Earlier in the day, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev held a meeting with the Iranian delegation headed by Vaezi.

"Mahmoud Vaezi noted that Iranian President Hassan Rouhani had ordered to prepare the road map on the development of relations with Azerbaijan, which would also contain the recommendations of the Azerbaijani president. During the meeting, the sides discussed the prospects of the bilateral relations," Aliyev's press service said citing the Iranian minister.

Relations between Iran and Azerbaijan have been improving since Rouhani became Iranian president in 2013. In an effort to boost relations and regional trade, both countries are taking part in the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC) planned to link India, Iran, the Caucasus and Russia via a rail and shipping route.

The world's second-largest economy will meet its growth targets of 6.5 to 7 percent this year, China's state news agency Xinhua reported. The country's stable growth is a reassuring sign for a "weak and vulnerable" global economy, it added.

Maintaining stable growth won't be easy for China in 2017, Xinhua said, "given persistently weak external demand, ongoing deleveraging and capacity-reduction pressure, and a slowing property sector."

But unlike other countries, China has the flexibility to beat off sharp economic decline as it restructures its economy toward consumption and services, according to the agency.

Statistics showed China's GDP witnessed a 6.7 percent increase in all three quarters of 2016. The country's industrial development, consumption, and investment maintained stable growth in October- November, with a rapid rise in the service industry.

Despite experts' concerns, Chinese officials are confident in the country's economy, saying the positive trends of this year will continue into next year.